# Did you see the NYT Article on Yeshivas? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 12, 2022, 9:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-see-the-nyt-article-on-yeshivas/971424 "2022-09-12T09:16:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2022, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-see-the-nyt-article-on-yeshivas/971424/141 "2022-09-17T03:00:02Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > And you may well have more success by discussing it with some less cranky fellow poster Given that I wrote the post in question, I’d like you to know I take great offence at the suggestion you are less cranky than me. > [@Max\_S](#): > > Contrast with Hasidic dynasties, which from what I can tell answer to no higher religious authority except God Himself. Coffee spit! PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN! You are falling for the oldest religious trick in the book. All cult leaders say they are just channelling their deity. If you want to quibble about what is and is not within the definition of “cult”, or “cult like behaviour” I’ll leave you to it. My point is simply that IMHO groups of people who bring up children so they cannot cope outside the group, and ostracise those who leave, suck. Whether they fall within your definition of cult or not. ---
**Author:** ![Princhester](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Princhester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Princhester)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2022, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-see-the-nyt-article-on-yeshivas/971424/142 "2022-09-17T03:18:38Z")
Sorry, ruined that joke “…I am less cranky than you”. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [September 17, 2022, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-see-the-nyt-article-on-yeshivas/971424/143 "2022-09-17T19:20:33Z")
> [@Paul\_was\_in\_Saudi](#): > > The typical rabbi is an employee. I saw one get fired for lending out books from the synagogue’s library. It depends on where the power lies. The typical minister is an employee also, but we’ve seen it takes a great and public scandal to get some of them fired. ---
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2022, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-see-the-nyt-article-on-yeshivas/971424/144 "2022-09-20T15:39:42Z")
> [@DocCathode](#): > > I don’t know about new insights. Maimonides/Rambam published his Guide To The Perplexed when? Rashi lived a few hundred years ago IIRC. But I don’t know when new insights and commentaries stopped being added to the average talmud. Depends what you mean by “the average talmud.” The standardized Talmudic text (this being the Babylonian Talmud) is the “Vilna edition,” and the text of the actual Talmud is surrounded on-page by commentaries no later than the mid-13th century. But many volumes have been published since then commenting on the Talmud, they’re just printed as separate volumes. That has never stopped, and is what continues in modern-day Yeshivas. But the point of learning Talmud is not necessarily to discover anything new, but to connect to G-d by learning his revealed word in detail. Most dedicated Rabbinic-track students will not be writing volumes of Talmudic commentary, but will be guiding/inspiring congregations or teaching students with their knowledge of the Torah and Talmud and the commentaries that the sages over the centuries have already authored. ---
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2022, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-see-the-nyt-article-on-yeshivas/971424/145 "2022-09-20T15:44:46Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > Rabbi Nathan turns around, faces Rabbi Eliezer, and says “Alright, Eliezer… the vote is five to two.” Not quite how the ending goes, but a cute-sounding take on it, I’ll admit. ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2022, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-see-the-nyt-article-on-yeshivas/971424/146 "2022-09-20T20:02:59Z")
If you read one page of the Talmud every day, it takes 7.5 years to complete. This is called _Daf Yomi_ (“a page a day”) and people all around the world do it, in sync, now with assistance from the Internet. > The latest cycle began on Jan. 5, 2020, and to mark the occasion My Jewish Learning launched a [groundbreaking effort](https://www.myjewishlearning.com/get-your-daily-dose-of-talmud/) to make this global project of Jewish learning available to a wide audience. Each day, subscribers to [A Daily Dose of Talmud](https://www.myjewishlearning.com/get-your-daily-dose-of-talmud/) receive an email with an accessible, easy-to-understand insight from that day’s page of Talmud. Here is a commentary on a recent _daf_, on a subject that may be of interest to some people here: marital relations. (FYI, the Talmud was the first religious text to mention the female orgasm, and unlike other sex-unfriendly religions, Judaism teaches that it is a man’s _duty_ to give his wife sexual pleasure.) But it also speaks about the passion for study of the Torah. On this page, the bold text is quoted from the Talmud. A _mishnah_ is a passage from the oldest, original Talmudic commentary on the Bible. > **[Ketubot 62 | My Jewish Learning](https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/ketubot-62/)** > > A husband owes his wife regular conjugal relations — a mitzvah derived from Exodus 21:10. The second half of a mishnah on yesterday’s daf ... ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2022, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-see-the-nyt-article-on-yeshivas/971424/147 "2022-09-28T21:09:19Z")
> [@commasense](#): > > FYI, the Talmud was the first religious text to mention the female orgasm At risk of continuing the hijack, this claim is extremely unlikely, considering the sexual nature of [hymns and other poems about the Mesopotamian goddess of love Inanna](https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/26977757.pdf) over a thousand years earlier, for example. Unless you’re defining “religious text” or “mention” in a specifically restricted way, there’s ample evidence that many pre-Talmud religious texts alluded to female orgasms. ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2022, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-see-the-nyt-article-on-yeshivas/971424/148 "2022-09-28T21:31:20Z")
I was repeating a claim I had heard, and may have left out some important qualifier. Were the hymns written or only oral? Could the Talmud be the first _written_ religious text? I’ll see if I can check with my source for further clarification. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2022, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-see-the-nyt-article-on-yeshivas/971424/149 "2022-09-28T21:38:02Z")
> [@commasense](#): > > Were the hymns written or only oral? Written, definitely; the only way we know about any Sumerian/Akkadian religious compositions is via their preservation in written form on (mostly) cuneiform clay tablets. (Technically, however, a historical “text” can be considered any verbal composition in a standardized form, whether it was transmitted via writing or oral repetition and memorization.) I doubt that you (even inadvertently) misrepresented your source’s claim about the Talmud, I suspect that the source simply didn’t know about and wasn’t thinking about the textual corpora of ancient non-Abrahamic religions when they made that claim. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2022, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-see-the-nyt-article-on-yeshivas/971424/150 "2022-09-28T21:56:48Z")
And just to prolong the nitpickery, the Talmud may not be the earliest religious text to refer to a female orgasm even within Judaism, according to [this article about the Dead Sea scrolls:](https://brill.com/view/journals/dsd/28/1/article-p38_3.xml?language=en) > [@](#): > > Bitenosh’s Orgasm, Galen’s Two Seeds and Conception Theory in the Hebrew Bible > > In the Genesis Apocryphon, Lamech worries that his son is illegitimate and accordingly confronts his wife about her fidelity. Bitenosh answers these accusations with a surprising response: she asks her husband to recall the sexual pleasure that she experienced during their intercourse. Scholars have clarified this rhetorical strategy by connecting the episode to Greco-Roman theories of embryogenesis, in which a woman’s pleasure during intercourse was taken to indicate conception. While this provides a convincing explanation for Bitenosh’s argumentation, in this essay I argue that rather than deriving these ideas from the Greco-Roman world, the conception theory which informed the Genesis Apocryphon is in fact consistent with notions that can already be found in the Hebrew Bible and the wider ancient Near East. […] ---
**Author:** ![commasense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/commasense/32/3017_2.png) [@commasense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/commasense)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2022, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-see-the-nyt-article-on-yeshivas/971424/151 "2022-10-12T23:37:40Z")
> **[Hasidic School Is Breaking State Education Law, N.Y. Official Rules...](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/12/nyregion/hasidic-yeshiva-mesivta-arugath-habosem-secular-education.html?unlocked_article_code=0uE-PklZ9D0FEP2E4rDrTPvNBi874OdYF68BtKsTxm1H3y8kidtwl6GXyL_aWKZfJ4yew8f9uhllxWSE2mFIztmIv8xVLZEz21_BuFVOla34aslQRBcSaMyGG9fGoDpCKVSEaEJD3d3otHDQ9O4UkFQ2mdgqYijraumWEKzO073ktCg2g7xB8JsStqVbPhAS4ZfQ7QxkvlfvQYHcMcdyyAL4WgISoxGssWOYXzDPYvfONZ1rBpdb7U9-l6MHxzjuoINQXAbYFOphU-Gl81sCq7Heb8FCfRL1tDu7crtC4FgWH94Vof6s-5xl2K35KFxD4t17Jsq8s8rEL2D1jH-XSiaw4SFk7gq2RqaglU9Os013CcqpQe-PqKZIWjcIkhvjoE0WFQ&smid=share-url)** > > Issued amid a lawsuit brought by a parent who left the community, the determination could signal challenges for scores of Hasidic Jewish schools. [gift link] > New York State officials have determined that a private Hasidic Jewish boys’ school in Brooklyn is violating the law by failing to provide a basic education, a ruling that could signal profound challenges for scores of Hasidic religious schools that have long resisted government oversight. > > The ruling marks the first time that the state has taken action against such a school, one of scores of private Hasidic yeshivas across New York that provide robust religious instruction in Yiddish but few lessons in English and math and virtually none in science, history or social studies. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-you-see-the-nyt-article-on-yeshivas/971424.md?page=7)